Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1996. [Vol. 3.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 23)

STUDIES - Zsolt K. Virágos: The American Brand of the Myth of Apocalypse

modern apocalyptic,"

5 "secular schematas of progressive history,"

6 "the angelic pope," "individual perfection" (as an apocalyptic event)

, etc. The apparent heterogeneity of the above cluster may result in either weakening the frame of referentiality in literary, and any other, discourse or, from the other end, it may prompt excessive analogous interpretations where any decay, accident, decline, or end (e.g. the end of a love affair) is apocalyptic, with the concomitant hope that a great deal has been added by placing the quotidient in an ostensibly larger frame of reference. As regards the interpretation of apocalyptic archetypes, allusions or symbolic patterns as they occur in the testamental texts, the fact that apocalyptic visions go well beyond simple description, that they are couched in language that is often cryptic and obscure, they have offered rich philosophical and poetic content for subsequent interpretations and prefigurative uses. Yet the ramifications of D. Dowling's observation might be worth considering: Clearly, when writers and readers adopt a system of imagery from another time and place, they may be doing so for a variety of motives, not all admirable. There is also room for much confusion when the imagery of apocalyptic is adopted into a secular context and the already confused notions of an interim period of strife (the thousand year reign of the Devil), Judgment Day and the new Jerusalem, struggle to find some secular counterpart. (119) Moreover, I find that today's apocalypses may appeal in their own right, without mythological shoring up, for the simple reason that the necessity to confront the "last things" possesses irresistible existential overtones that concern fundamental questions of the human predicament. Nevertheless, the connotative cultural residue of these questions is both enormous and awesome and there is no dismissing the heritage of Biblical mythology in any consideration of the literary 5 Of which, according to Martin Buber, the chief example is Marx's theory of history. 6 from Vico and Comte via Prudhon to Hegel and Marx 127